Travel ban on Pakistani rape victim lifted

Mai, 33, was allegedly ordered raped in 2002 by a council of elders in Meerwala, her home village in eastern Punjab province, as punishment for her 13-year-old brother's alleged affair with a woman from a higher caste family. Mai and her family deny any affair ever took place and say the brother was in fact sexually assaulted by members of the other family.

A trial court in 2002 sentenced six men to death and acquitted eight others in Mai's rape. In March, the High Court in Punjab province acquitted five of the men and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison.

The Supreme Court ordered the re-arrest of all 13 men on Tuesday, a day after an emotional appeal by Mai.

Mai welcomed Musharraf's remarks, but said she had no immediate plans to travel abroad.

"I wanted to go (abroad) as ambassador of Pakistan," she told The Associated Press in an interview in the capital of Islamabad, where she arrived this week to attend the appeals.

She said she hoped those who attacked her "will get punishment" soon.

The rape made international headlines and become a major embarrassment for Pakistan's Western-friendly government, drawing attention to a legal system that has done little to protect women from violence.

In Washington, a U.S. State Department spokesman said the perpetrators of the gang-rape must be brought to justice, adding that the United States is closely following the Mai case..

"The use of rape or sexual intimidation as a means of punishment or retribution, whether by individuals or by groups, is unacceptable in our view," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Mai won international renown and praise after speaking openly about her ordeal in a country where most victims of sexual attacks suffer in silence for fear of being ostracized by their families.

She has been the subject of editorials in prominent newspapers, including The New York Times. And she has received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from sympathizers around the world.

Several courts -- local, federal and religious -- have issued conflicting rulings in the case this year in a legal pingpong match that has often seemed capricious and confused, further embarrassing authorities.

But perhaps the greatest damage came after revelations that the government had barred Mai from traveling abroad and placed restrictions on her movement within the country.

Mai had been invited by the U.S.-based women's rights group Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women to tell her story in the United States. But she could not attend because authorities had confiscated her passport.

After officials in the Bush administration strongly condemned the move, Islamabad rescinded the ban. On Monday, Mai said the government had returned her passport.

Musharraf, a strong ally of Washington, acknowledged in an interview while on a trip to New Zealand that he had ordered the travel ban to prevent Mai from casting Pakistan in a bad light.

On his Web site, Musharraf defended that decision.

"I have already publicly stated that I took the decision to stop her from going to the U.S. myself. I took this decision in the best national interest of Pakistan because I truly believed that the invitation would have tarnished Pakistan's international image rather than help improve the lot of women folk in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world," he said.

"I believe there was a strong ulterior intent of maligning Pakistan by vested interests, rather than sincerely helping Mai out," he said without identifying the vested interests.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for Musharraf, said the president issued the message in response to the e-mails about Mai's case. Some people were supportive of the government's action but others called it "retrogressive," Sultan said.

Hundreds of women are raped, maimed and killed every year in Pakistan in so-called "honor" attacks over behavior deemed inappropriate such as extramarital affairs or marrying without the family's consent. Many are killed by their own families.